Strong men, weak men, and (every so often when the Liberal Party grudgingly allows them), women, grace the stage of federal politics. But it is often the straw men that cause strife in our political discussions.

When federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud released a review of sheep exports to the Middle East this week, it was widely reported as having failed to ban the trade.

The RSPCA "slammed" the review, saying the decisions were, "weak, not based on science or evidence, and have effectively left farmers holding a ticking time bomb".

"The report has failed to stop voyages during the high-risk, heat-stress period, in direct conflict with the advice of the Australian Veterinary Association", the animal welfare group said.

Ban never on review agenda

But the point is, the review, by livestock veterinarian Dr Michael McCarthy, was never going to recommend the trade be stopped.

That was not in Dr McCarthy's terms of reference, which were about how best to apply a short-term solution to the trade to get it through the looming northern summer.

Specifically, the purpose of the review was "to advise on … actions that would be required to assure health and welfare outcomes for sheep being transported to the Middle East during the northern hemisphere summer".

The Turnbull government had always made it clear it didn't want to close the trade down, or even stop it during these months when heat stress causes such suffering to animals in confined quarters in stifling temperatures.

But that message got pretty lost in the outrage about animal welfare provoked by the awful footage, taken last year, of clearly distressed, dying and dead sheep on board the Awassi Express.

On that basis, if the government thought that it would be able to contain the outrage about this issue by holding a very limited review, it got it badly wrong.

However, it is not clear this was the entirety of the thinking that led to Dr McCarthy's report.

The live export trade is a classic case of how in current politics, absolutism often dominates the broadcast messages, while actual politics tries to find either middle ground, or a muddle through, or both.

Coalition avoids knee-jerk reaction

The McCarthy review was definitely designed as a way of addressing the problems exposed by the Awassi Express footage to give the trade enough space to keep going through the northern summer while appearing to insist on community standards of animal care.

But its limited remit also reflects a view within the Cabinet that absolutism should not be rewarded.

That is, Coalition ministers saw what happened to Labor — and to cattle producers — when it closed down the live cattle trade to Indonesia for a couple of months in 2011.

The outrage about the treatment of cattle in Indonesian abattoirs was perhaps even greater than the anger that has met the latest controversy about sheep on their way to the Middle East.

The protests to MPs' offices completely overwhelmed everything else in federal politics for several days.

But when Labor responded by immediately stopping the trade, it was equally lambasted for the devastating impact it had on cattle producers — and for that matter, the cattle already waiting in baking hot pens at ports across northern Australia.

They still had to be fed. They couldn't just be slaughtered at local abattoirs — because there weren't any at that time in northern Australia between Broome and Cairns.

The financial fallout of the ban was still being fought out in the courts last year.

But beyond the real world impact of Labor's move — which rather miraculously managed to get commitments to changes to abattoir practices in another country in less than two months — the lesson for Coalition ministers was that you don't respond to, or reward, absolutism.

And it's not just on live sheep trade either.

You can see the same sort of grudging approach in the way it has handled other inquiries, most notably the banking royal commission.

Ban would be an 'own goal'

The Government has also had genuine concerns that if it did ban live exports to the Middle East, there would be retaliatory action taken in other markets, including chilled beef and wheat.

There is anger within some parts of the Government that this is also something of an own goal for the Coalition: that during the reign of Barnaby Joyce as agriculture minister from 2013, it was made clear to the industry that policing its standards was a low priority.

As a result, sensible measures to clean up the live export trade that Labor had introduced towards the end of its term were either not implemented, or not properly implemented, greatly increasing the likelihood of the sort of horror events we saw last month.

Not explicitly stated in the review, but clearly expected by the Government, is that the measures Dr McCarthy has put in place will almost certainly force some of the real cowboys in the trade out of the business. People with knowledge of the trade wish the Government good luck with that one.

In political terms, there is now effectively a race against time for the future of the trade, which at some point soon must reach a point of no return in terms of reputational damage.

MPs may force ban regardless

On Monday, Liberal MP Sussan Ley is going to move legislation in Federal Parliament to ban the trade.

She has the support of some on the crossbench. Labor has already announced that, in government, it would ban the trade. That means the legislation has a really good chance of being passed.

The only thing that makes the passage of the bill uncertain is depleted numbers in the house of Representatives as a result of the citizenship issue.

The Government hopes if the measures outlined in the McCarthy review do see some operators forced out, it will be able to make a much better case to its own side for letting the trade continue.

But the bottom line here is that the Government is hoping to drive people out of the industry by regulatory reform and is forecasting a 30 per cent drop in the trade.

If you are worried about the sheep, that is a good outcome. But it doesn't answer the question of what a 30 per cent drop in sales means to producers.

Labor, seared by its experiences in 2011 and, being in Opposition, not having to deal with the immediate crisis, has done what both sides of politics really need to do on this issue: chart a medium-term policy for the industry (whether you think it should be closed down or not) which lets producers know where policy is heading, and establishes a framework to help them adjust to that change.

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